Bell Harry

by Nicholas Best

  Becket’s body was placed on a bier and carried up the stairs into the choir. It was left in front of the high altar for the remainder of the night. Vessels were positioned underneath it to catch any further blood. Then the weeping monks took it in turns to stand guard over the corpse until daybreak.

  They received bad news next morning. A messenger came to them from the King’s men.

  ‘Becket is not to have an Archbishop’s funeral,’ he told them. ‘He was a traitor to his King.’

  ‘But it’s the custom. He must be buried among former Archbishops.’

  ‘He was a traitor. He is to be treated as such.’

  ‘And if we refuse?’

  ‘His body will be dug up and hanged on a gibbet. Then it will be torn apart by horses. The pieces will be fed to pigs or thrown onto a dung heap for the dogs to feed on.’

  ‘What should we do with it, then?’

  ‘Bury it anonymously somewhere, so it can’t be found.’

  The monks decided on a compromise. Closing the cathedral to the public, they gave Becket a low-key burial in the crypt. His body was carried down the stairs and laid to rest in a marble sarcophagus. His blood and brains were placed in a casket next to the sarcophagus. Then the door to the crypt was sealed and all entry forbidden to the public for the immediate future.

  It was another three months before the monks judged it safe to open the crypt again. After tempers had cooled, ordinary people were allowed in at last to view Becket’s resting place. They came in droves, curious to see the spot where Becket had been murdered, before kneeling down and saying their prayers at his graveside

  The miracles began soon afterwards. There were astonishing stories of cures for the old and sick, cripples arising from beside the martyr’s tomb with their prayers answered and their bodies made whole again. The tales of Becket’s miraculous powers were so many and so persuasive that the Pope sent two sceptical officials to Canterbury in 1172 to investigate their accuracy. The men returned to Rome convinced of Becket’s powers. He was made a saint in 1173.

  King Henry visited his tomb a year later. Terrified of excommunication, the King had sworn from the first that he had never meant St Thomas to be killed. It had all been a dreadful misunderstanding. Henry was suitably penitent as his ship arrived at Southampton and he rode from there to Canterbury to express his remorse at Becket’s graveside.

  The King dismounted at St Dunstan’s, a church in the fields outside the town walls. It was half a mile from St Dunstan’s to the cathedral. Changing out of his royal clothes, Henry dressed as a pilgrim for the rest of the journey. He was barefoot, wearing only a rough woollen shirt and a cloak to keep off the rain as he crossed the river at the West Gate and made his way on foot to the cathedral.

  His feet were muddy and bleeding by the time he arrived at the gate. Henry went straight to the scene of the murder. He fell to his knees at the spot and kissed the stone where Becket had fallen. Then he went into the crypt and knelt in obvious distress at the tomb of the martyr.

  He was in tears as he prayed. Shrugging off his cloak, he bowed his head over the grave and nodded to the Bishop of London. The Bishop stepped forward and gave him five lashes with a monastic rod, penance for his carelessness in bringing about the death of St Thomas Becket.

  The other senior clergy followed suit. Then the cathedral’s eighty monks took it in turns to give the King three lashes each, enough to tear his back to ribbons. Henry was a broken man as he slumped against a pillar, ready to spend the whole night in fasting and prayer at Thomas Becket’s graveside.

  He attended mass next morning before leaving Canterbury at length and setting off for London. The monks gave him a phial of the martyr’s blood as a souvenir. It contained only a few drops, liberally mixed with water. The monks were doing a good trade in Becket’s blood, selling it off drop by drop in return for a substantial contribution to the cathedral’s funds.

  Henry went away, his penitence done. In his footsteps came other pilgrims bearing gifts and offerings for the shrine of St Thomas. Among them, in the summer of 1179, was King Louis VII of France.

  Louis was the first French king to set foot on English soil. His only son lay sick and close to death as he arrived in Kent for a five-day pilgrimage to Canterbury. It was unanimously agreed that only a miracle from St Thomas could save the child’s life as Louis strode through the cathedral gate to make his mark at the shrine and beg the saint for help.

  Henry II was with him as they went down to the crypt. Both kings had known Becket in life. The monks stood back respectfully as King Louis crossed himself at the tomb and got down on his knees in front of it. It had been arranged that he would stay there all night in fasting and prayer.

  Louis had brought several valuable gifts with him to present to St Thomas. They were advance payments for the miracle that he hoped was about to be performed on his son. One was a solid gold cup. Another, the most precious offering of all, was an enormous, blood-red ruby.

  Chapter Four

  The Scrivener of Magna Carta

  Henry II’s son John became king in 1199, but his reign was not a success. Exasperated by years of autocratic rule, England’s most powerful barons rose against him in May 1215. They raised an army at Northampton and marched on London. King John was forced to retreat to Windsor and sue for peace.

  The negotiations were handled by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen Langton was tasked with drawing up a treaty for the future government of the country acceptable to both sides. The work in progress had yet to be given a name. If it grew any longer though, it would surely have to be called Magna Carta before it was finished.

  Langton did some of the work for it in the cathedral library. There were people in there, educated monks, who could assist him with the wording of the agreement. They were learned men, schooled in the law, who knew how to draw up a legal document and make it watertight. Langton was relying on them to help make the treaty a success.

  It was no easy task. The barons couldn’t even agree among themselves about what should go into the great charter, let alone the King and his counsellors. Langton’s job was to advise both sides and bring them to the conference table with an agenda that they could all accept, even if they didn’t like it much. He was finding it uphill work.

  ‘The King refuses to listen,’ he complained to his scrivener. ‘He resents any challenge to his authority. He’s only agreed to talk at all because the barons have captured London. It’ll be a nightmare getting him to accept anything he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘And the barons?’

  ‘Their demands get worse every day. The list goes on and on. Inheritance, marriage portions, money owed to Jews. One of them even wants all the fish weirs removed from the Thames and the Medway. I mean, I ask you.’

  ‘I believe it’s a good idea, Archbishop. The weirs are a terrible nuisance to traffic.’

  ‘It’s irrelevant. That’s the point. The man wouldn’t stop talking about it at the last committee meeting. Went on and on about fish while the rest of us were trying to discuss great affairs of state.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s always somebody like that.’

  ‘Yes, there is. Every meeting, there’s always some idiot droning on interminably about something irrelevant while everyone else has to sit and listen. Never sit on a committee, Scrivener. It isn’t worth it.’

  The scrivener nodded. He had no intention of doing so. He was happy with his lot in the cathedral scriptorium.

  ‘You don’t think much of the barons, Archbishop?’

  ‘Gangsters, most of them. Fighting is the only thing they know about.’

  ‘And the King?’

  ‘He can’t even read or write.’ The Archbishop, a university man, spoke with contempt. ‘Or if he can, I’ve never seen any evidence of it. He’s just as bad as the barons.’

  Worse, in fact. King John had roundly abused his powers as monarch. He had slept with other men’s wives, cheated them out of their money and confiscated their e
states. He had even had his own nephew murdered, his brother Richard’s son. King John had been a despot from the very beginning of his reign.

  The most abominable crime in a long list had been the murder of Maud de Briouze, the Lady of Bramber. Maud had had the courage to speak out against the killing of John’s nephew, where everyone else had held their tongues. John had had her thrown into a dungeon for her presumption. She had been left to die of starvation in Corfe Castle, alongside one of her sons.

  The son had died first. Maud Bramber had been so mad with hunger by the end that she had tried to bite her own child’s face off before dying too. The story had shocked the nation when it emerged. The barons were not the only ones who wanted to see their errant monarch called to account for his actions. The rest of the country did as well.

  ‘There has to be a law,’ the Archbishop insisted. ‘The King can’t just be allowed to do what he likes. Not if he’s going to make his subjects eat their own children.’

  ‘But you say he won’t listen.’

  ‘He will if the barons force him to. He’ll have to, if he wants to keep his throne.’

  ‘What kind of law?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something that prevents him from throwing people into prison without good cause. We must put it into the charter that he can never do that.’

  ‘It would have to be carefully worded.’

  The Archbishop agreed. ‘The King will certainly try to wriggle out of it if we don’t get the wording right.’

  They thought for a while. It was the scrivener who broke the silence at length.

  ‘Are we including the serfs in this?’

  ‘Not for the moment. Maybe later.’

  They thought again. Then the scrivener came up with a suggestion.

  ‘No free man shall be cast into a dungeon without just cause. Would that do, Archbishop?’

  ‘Too vague. The King could easily find a way around it. He could lock them up somewhere else or insist that his cause was just. It can’t be left to him to decide. He’s not to be trusted.’

  ‘What about this, then? No free man shall suffer imprisonment of any kind without just cause, the merits of the case to be decided by someone other than the King?’

  ‘Getting there.’ The Archbishop was cautious. ‘Something along those lines. It needs to be better worded, though. Give it some thought, Scrivener. See what you can come up with.’

  ‘I will, my Lord.’

  ‘And property. There ought to be something in there about not taking other people’s property without compensation. We need to protect the rights of property.’

  It took a week and many long discussions with colleagues before the scrivener found the appropriate wording at last. The Archbishop was packing his bags for the conference as the man hurried in, proffering a sheet of parchment. He handed it to Langton.

  ‘I think I’ve got it right, this time. What d’you think?’

  The Archbishop read it. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

  ‘Yes.’ Langton was pleased. ‘That’s it, Scrivener. That’s exactly what we need. Good work.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord.’

  ‘I’ll take it to the meeting with me. It’ll be interesting to see the King’s face when we read it to him.’

  ‘Will it get into the charter?’

  ‘All depends. The King’s advisers will certainly try to water it down. We shall have to stand our ground and see what happens.’

  ‘I hope it does.’

  ‘I hope so too. We need something like this in England.’

  The conference was to be held under an agreement of safe conduct. King John had suggested Windsor Castle for the meeting place, but the barons weren’t having that. He could easily murder the lot of them once they were inside the castle walls. They had opted for a patch of neutral ground instead, a riverbank midway between Windsor and the little village of Staines.

  The Archbishop went to pray at the shrine of St Thomas before setting out. It was a good idea to get the saint’s backing for the formidable task that lay ahead. Whatever else happened during the negotiations, Stephen Langton was determined to make sure that the Church came out of it all right.

  St Thomas’s body still lay in the crypt, although not for much longer. Plans were afoot to move it to a much grander setting upstairs, where the flow of pilgrims would be easier to manage. The eastern end of the cathedral was being enlarged for the purpose.

  For the moment though, Becket lay in the crypt, where he had first been buried. To keep his body safe, the sarcophagus had long since been walled in and covered with a heavy marble slab. Small apertures in the side walls enabled the pilgrims to put their arms through and touch the coffin containing the sacred relics.

  Pride of place at the shrine had been given to the Régale de France, the beautiful ruby donated by King Louis VII of France in 1179. The ruby was said to be the most fabulous jewel in all of Christendom. It had certainly worked its magic for the King. His son had recovered from near death within two days of Louis presenting the jewel to the shrine.

  Stephen Langton wondered if it would do something similar for him as he completed his respects to St Thomas. When he had finished, he headed off for Windsor to mediate between King John and the rebellious barons gathering under flag of truce in a meadow nearby.

  The King was in his castle high above the river when the Archbishop arrived. Langton went to see the royal advisers first, the men negotiating the peace treaty on the King’s behalf. He delivered the barons’ latest demands, neatly written out by the monks at Canterbury. Then he went to meet King John.

  He found the monarch in a foul mood. John was outraged at the prospect of a humiliating peace treaty with his enemies.

  ‘I suppose I do have to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘I fear so, Your Majesty. The barons are determined on change.’

  ‘They’re trying to tell me what to do.’

  The Archbishop could not deny it.

  ‘They’re saying that the people should command the King, instead of the other way about. How can that be right?’

  ‘We live in difficult times.’ Langton’s sympathies lay with the barons, but he wasn’t going to say so to the King.

  ‘The barons shouldn’t be dictating terms to me. I’m the one who’s King.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Your Majesty, it would be wise to listen to them. They can make a lot of trouble if you don’t.’

  King John knew it. He had been hoping that the Archbishop might suggest a way out for him, but the man wasn’t being helpful. His loyalties were to the Church before anything else.

  ‘You’re saying I must talk to the barons?’

  ‘Yes, you must, Your Majesty. It will bring peace, if nothing else.’

  ‘All right, then. If it can’t be avoided. We’ll meet them tomorrow. In a field, I believe?’

  Langton nodded. Runnymede had been chosen because it was an open space, easy to defend. The meadow was almost an island, protected by the river Thames and long stretches of marshland that were difficult to cross in a hurry. There was no chance of the King ambushing the barons there or taking them by surprise.

  The two sides met next morning. It was a blazing June day as the King arrived from Windsor. The barons were already at Runnymede. They had pitched their tents at the far end of the field and were watching in stony silence as the King and his entourage rode towards them across the grass.

  There were fewer than forty barons in all, only a minority of the country’s nobles. The bulk of the nobility either supported the King or were guardedly neutral, careful not to get involved. But the barons who had come to Runnymede were all of them powerful men, impossible for the King to ignore.

  They each had their own private army, for a start. They had brought thei
r retainers with them, armed to the teeth and ready for trouble. Between them, the barons at Runnymede had more than enough men-at-arms to overwhelm the King’s people and take him prisoner if he declined to listen to the barons’ grievances or discuss their terms for a treaty.

  John saw at once that he was beaten. He would have to concede to some of the barons’ demands at least if he wanted to retain his throne. There were too many big names ranged against him, too many powerful warlords sitting menacingly at the head of their troops for him to do anything else.

  A throne had been provided for King John at one end of the conference table in the pavilion. Taking his seat, he looked around unhappily and gave the signal for the talking to begin.

  The horse trading began at once. The King’s advisers sat on one side of the table, the leading barons on the other. The remainder stood behind them, listening intently as a clerk read out the terms of the treaty in full, sentence by sentence.

  A few of the terms were nodded through immediately without debate. Most were set aside for further discussion. The negotiations continued for the rest of the day and for the next three days as well. The barons retired exhausted to their tents at the end of the proceedings every night. The King went home to his castle.

  The final details weren’t hammered out until 19 June. The terms were still not to the King’s liking, but there was nothing he could do about it. The barons had all stood firm against him. He did his best to put a brave face on the situation as a draft of the final agreement was drawn up on the last day for everyone’s approval.

  ‘My chancery clerks will make fair copies,’ he promised the barons. ‘I’ll have them distributed around the shires so that everyone can see them. They’ll be placed in cathedrals for safekeeping.’

  ‘Will the copies have your seal attached?’

  ‘They will. Every copy will carry the royal seal. You have my assurance on that.’